Not In So Many Words
by hilaryclaire
Summary: CJ looks at her for a moment, frowning, wondering exactly how much Joey knows, and how she found out. And she doesn’t know what to say, so she brushes the sympathy aside out of habit. “It’s... it’s no big deal. I barely knew the man.” (Takes
1. Notes

~ Title: Not In So Many Words  
  
~ Author: Hilary Claire (email to: hilary_claire_@hotmail.com)  
  
~ Spoilers: Relevant Posse Comitatus spoilers. Everything else is, at most, alluded to...  
  
~ Rating: PG  
  
~ Summary: CJ looks at her for a moment, frowning, wondering exactly how much Joey knows, and how she found out. And she doesn't know what to say, so she brushes the sympathy aside out of habit. "It's... it's no big deal. I barely knew the man." (Takes place a few months after the events of Posse Comitatus.)  
  
~ Pairings: None, not really... It's reflects on CJ/Simon and Joey/Other... Not that Simon or Joey's 'other' actually appear... Hence, reflection...  
  
~ Archive: Tell me where you want to put it and there's a good chance I'll say yes...  
  
~ Feedback: Yes please! Can be directed to hilary_claire_@hotmail.com or posted with fanfiction.net...  
  
~ Disclaims: No, I don't own anything here. I'm out of school currently, and I have to do something to prevent my brain from going all mushy. Ownership really belongs to one of the following entities: Aaron Sorkin. NBC. Warner Brothers. John Wells Productions... You get the idea.  
  
~ Author's Random Note: First of all, I saw someone put all of their notes and stuff in one chapter, and the actual story in the next. I thought, hey, I like that. My notes tend to go on for awhile and I like to think that people read them rather than scrolling past. So, trying new format for a couple of stories. If people hate it, tell me and we'll go back to the other way... but only if you offer a really compelling reason for me to do so...  
  
~ Author's Notes About the Story: This fic marks the return of Joey (Yay! Don't we all love Joey?) and offers a little bit of Joey insight as well as a little bit of CJ insight. Those two seriously have a lot in common, (some of which I made up) if you really want to look for it. Apparently, I wanted to. ;) Also, you'll notice I don't mention Kenny at all. That's cuz he's not there. Don't think me strange; Marlee Matlin has an amazing capacity for the English language, and a beautiful voice to boot. I think it's high time she be allowed to shine, all-her-by-herself. If you really want to, you can imagine Kenny there signing for her, I guess. But if you do, I think the story will lose something... Also, I guess you could look at this in a bit of a slashey way. But again, I don't think I would. Anyways, just read.... OH, and just in case you thought I was making up the stuff about deaf/hard of hearing community, I wasn't. At least, not really. I happen to know a few things about D/HoH community thanks to my friend Jenny, who is profoundly deaf and to whom I shall dedicate this story. So while I take some artistic freedom with the story, it isn't entirely based outside of reality... 


	2. Not In So Many Words

~ NOT IN SO MANY WORDS  
  
It was six o-clock when CJ called a full lid and sent the press corps home. She left the briefing room quickly, and shut herself in her office, where a mound of reports sat on her desk, begging to be read by morning. She sighed, and told herself this was normal; this was her job. She sat down and started reading.  
  
That was three hours ago, and in that time CJ has read, uninterrupted -until now that is. CJ hears a knock on her door and she looks up to see Joey Lucas, who is carrying two Chinese Take-Out containers.  
  
"Hey," Joey says, by way of greeting. "Donna ordered food; Josh said you liked the chicken noodles..." She walks up to CJ's desk and looked for a clear spot where she could put the carton down. But the desk is covered with papers, and so CJ takes it from her instead.  
  
"Thanks," CJ tells her, peering into the container, suddenly hungry. She can't remember what she had for lunch or if she had lunch at all.  
  
"You look like you were busy..." Joey tells her. "I didn't mean to interrupt..."  
  
"Not at all," CJ protests. She realises she hasn't had a real conversation for weeks, and, like the food, now that she sees it, or the opportunity for it, she is starved. "You want to... You can stay, you know, if you wanted. We could eat and talk and... If you wanted." It was more of a plea than anything else, and CJ at first wondered if the other woman understood her.  
  
But then Joey smiles, "okay" she nods, and sinks onto the couch.  
  
"Did you just get in now?" CJ asks.  
  
"Yeah. Well, a few hours ago, I guess," Joey picks at her food.  
  
"So, how area the polling numbers looking?" CJ asks, unable to think of much else to say to this woman, who she barely knows.  
  
Joey nods, "Good. Not fabulous, but not terrible." She pauses, then continues. "It's strange. Usually, with Josh, he wants the answer, the data, before he asks the question, but this time he seems rather unconcerned..."  
  
A slow smile creeps over CJ's lips and she explains, "He's got a girlfriend."  
  
Joey's eyes widen. "Who?" she breathes, and CJ tells her, and they gossip about their coworkers and the campaign through soft Chinese noodles and stir-fried vegetables.  
  
"I heard about Simon Donovan," Joey says eventually. Then, softly, she adds, "I'm sorry."  
  
CJ looks at her for a moment, frowning, wondering exactly how much Joey knows, and how she found out. And she doesn't know what to say, so she brushes the sympathy aside out of habit. "It's... it's no big deal. I barely knew the man."  
  
But Joey ignores this and continues, "You know, I've really admired how you've handled the press these past few weeks, with all this stuff from Ritchie's people, and the Qumari minister, especially after what happened to Simon."  
  
CJ looks confused for a second. "I ... I don't know what you mean. It's my job to handle these things." CJ says, brushing the mention of Simon aside.  
  
"That isn't what I meant," Joey says, raising an eyebrow, and CJ is suddenly on the defensive.  
  
"He was my agent for, like, less than three weeks! I didn't really know him..."  
  
"Okay," Joey says, and then neither of them says anything.  
  
"You know, I have all these reports to read still and..." CJ says, apologetically, gesturing to her desk.  
  
"Yeah," Joey says, getting up.  
  
"Thanks for the food," CJ says, while the pollster is still looking at her.  
  
"No problem," Joey says, and she starts walking towards the door. CJ opens the report she had started before Joey came in and finds where she left off. But Joey hesitates at the door, and she turns back.  
  
"I got my first ASL interpreter when I was nineteen," she says, stepping back into the office.  
  
CJ looks up, "I'm sorry...?" she asks.  
  
"I said, I got my first ASL interpreter when I was nineteen," Joey repeats carefully, seating herself on the other side of the desk from CJ.  
  
"What about before you were nineteen? How did you..." CJ struggles for a way to make the sentence less offensive.  
  
Obviously this is a question Joey has heard before; she knows how to answer it, but is clearly tired of being asked. "I spoke. Read lips. Like I'm doing now. And my family would sign to me, some. Lots of deaf kids go to deaf school, get immersed in the non-hearing world, in so called 'deaf culture'. But my parents didn't want me to grow up being afraid of the hearing world, so they raised me in it. I went to public school, I hung out at the mall with my hearing friends. And it's probably a good thing too - you know how many pollsters the deaf and hard of hearing community wants? Not too many!" Throughout her speech, Joey has become considerably more agitated, and towards the end she is signing passionately, emphasizing certain words.  
  
"Oh," CJ says, she can't think of anything else to say. "I didn't... I didn't know." She says.  
  
"It's okay. Now you do," Joey says, slightly embarrassed at her outburst. "Anyways, I was telling you about Michael."  
  
"Michael?" CJ asks.  
  
"My interpreter," Joey explains. "I fell in love with him," Joey says simply, shrugging. "I like to think he was falling for me too, but you never know." Joey pauses, looks up, past CJ out the window. "He died six weeks after we met."  
  
"Oh..." CJ whispers, thinking of a thousand questions and not sure which one to ask first. She sinks back in her chair.  
  
"Car accident," Joey says. "Drunk driver ran a light and..."  
  
"How..." CJ frowns, struck by the familiarity of what Joey is telling her. "How did you know?"  
  
Joey shrugs, "Would you believe it if I told you women's intuition?" she asks.  
  
CJ shakes her head, no. "How did you know?" she insists.  
  
Joey considers. "I just knew."  
  
"How?" CJ asks, clearly not letting it go. "Have people been saying things? Talking about me?"  
  
"Well, not that I'm in a position to eavesdrop," Joey jokes, then turns serious. "You rely on what people say to get information. I can't always do that. So I look at other things. They say that actions speak louder than words, and they do, at least if you know how to read the actions. When I first got here, I saw how you went from the press room to your office, and I asked Josh what was going on. Then I asked Toby. Then I asked Donna what the feel of the entire office had been. And then I took a guess."  
  
"Good guess," CJ blinks, unable to think of anything else to say.  
  
"Yeah," Joey says. "But I only guessed because of what happened with me and Michael. When I said I admired you, I also admire how you've kept you head, stayed in the game."  
  
CJ scoffs at this; "if I really did such a good job, how come you figured it out?" she asks.  
  
For this Joey has no answer, but instead she says, "I wish I had been able to react like that to Micheal's death..." Joey looks down at her hands.  
  
"How did you react?" CJ asks.  
  
Joey looks up, "I'm sorry?" she asks.  
  
"How did you react? When your interpreter died?" CJ asks.  
  
"I didn't sign. For four and half years, I didn't sign. I was amazed at how much I lost in that time - before he died, I was almost fluent in ASL, and then I lost it all, and it took a long time to get back."  
  
CJ nods, sensing that Joey will keep going, if given the chance.  
  
"But it was more that just the ASL that I was cut off from," Joey explains. "I stopped speaking too. For almost a year, I didn't say anything to my friends, my family beyond what was absolutely necessary. I felt that Michael was my connection to the world, and I wasn't a part of it without him." Here there is a pause in the conversation. "Maybe it was easier for my friends, because they knew what happened."  
  
"What are you..." CJ interjects here. "What are you saying?"  
  
"You should talk to Josh. He's worried about you; his head isn't in the polling numbers and it isn't just because he has a girlfriend."  
  
CJ looks at her, a pained expression on her face. "They can't know," she says helplessly.  
  
"You should talk to Josh. And to Toby; Toby might be more worried than Josh, just not as vocal."  
  
"Toby?" CJ says, sceptically. "Toby's worried about me?"  
  
"Not in so many words, but ... yeah," Joey nods. "When you left the press room before, Toby looked ... acted more worried than Josh. And if you tell Josh, Toby will beat it out of him, which might be fun for you and me, but not so much for Josh..."  
  
At this CJ laughs, impressed with Joey's sense of humour and marvelling at how it matches her brand of dry wit. There is another pause, and so Joey says again, "You should tell Josh."  
  
"I can't do that," CJ breathes, her voice barely above a whisper.  
  
"Sure you can," Joey tells her.  
  
"No, I really can't! Do you have any idea how..." CJ begins, all of her insecurities about working in a gender biased environment flooding back to her, and flooding out, accusingly, in a rush, "I represent this administration to the media every day! That's my job, Joey! I already project a weak image of the White House because I'm a woman! I can't -"  
  
"There are plenty of people out there, men and women both, who respect you and the way you do this job," Joey interrupts, hoping that the professional argument will have a bigger impact than a personal one she knows she can make about also being a woman - a deaf woman - in a hearing man's job. "Nobody is going to think less of you if you show an emotion once and a while. And I wasn't suggesting telling the whole world, I was suggesting telling Josh and Toby."  
  
"I just can't do it," CJ says. "Because if they know, if they think I'm weak, then I can't do my job because they'll start keeping me out of the loop again."  
  
"They won't think you're weak," Joey protests.  
  
"They already think I'm weak," CJ counters.  
  
Joey looks at her. "They don't think you're weak," she tells CJ after a moment. "They respect you very much. And they're worried about you right now."  
  
"I can't tell them," CJ insists, but her voice has lost the strength it once held.  
  
"Okay," Joey says, marvelling at the walls CJ surrounds herself with and how she defends the walls. Joey isn't one to back down easily, but she's already caved to CJ at least three times in the last half hour. "I should let you work," Joey says, looking pointedly at CJ's paper-strewn desk.  
  
"Yeah," CJ agrees, and watches Joey stand up. The pollster makes her way towards the door, and CJ suddenly calls, "Joey?" But Joey doesn't hear this, so CJ moves deftly out of her chair, to grab the other woman's arm.  
  
Joey spins back. "Hm?" she asks, surprised.  
  
"I just..." CJ begins, uncertainly and takes a step backwards. "I just wanted to ask you..." She leans back on her desk.  
  
Joey nods, expectantly.  
  
"Does it go away? The ache, the hurt... Does it go away?"  
  
"Nope," Joey answers simply, shaking her head. "When you've loved someone, it never really goes away."  
  
"I didn't love him!" CJ says sharply.  
  
"Really?" Joey asks her.  
  
"No!" CJ insists strongly, but her features soften, and she says almost wistfully, "I didn't know him well enough to love him."  
  
At this Joey nods, "It will get easier. At first I thought about Michael every second, then once a day, then sometimes not for weeks, months. Now... I still think of him, sometimes. But it isn't as bad as it was at first," Joey tries to be encouraging, "It gets easier."  
  
"Okay," CJ says. "Well... okay." She sighs and walks back around her desk.  
  
"Okay," Joey nods, clearly their meeting, such as it was, is over. She heads for the door, and once more she stops once she reaches it and turns back. "CJ?" she asks.  
  
CJ looks up, as she did before, but looking considerably more frazzled now than before. "Yeah?" she asks.  
  
"What you said before, about being perceived as weak because you're a woman... I think you call yourself CJ instead of Claudia for the same reason I've abandoned Josephine in favour of Joey. So, yeah, I have some idea of what it's like. But if you don't think I get a whole other set of issues and misconceptions because I can't hear, well..." Joey stops, shaking her head, pausing to reconstruct her argument. "People will perceive you as weak for many reasons, CJ. Maybe being a Democrat is a reason, maybe being a woman, maybe because of Simon. But most of the people who would bother with that don't know you and what they think shouldn't matter to you." Joey stops again, this time it's more for dramatic effect than anything else. "I don't think you should announce any of this at a briefing. In fact, I would say that would be a very bad idea. But talk to Josh, and to Toby. They won't judge you; they'll be too busy trying to figure out how to help."  
  
CJ looks at Joey for a long moment, and Joey looks back, trying to read CJ's expression. "You're right," CJ is the first to break the stare, and looks away.  
  
"I'm sorry?" Joey asks her, not able to see her lips move.  
  
"I said... I said you were right. You were right about..." CJ hesitates. "You were right about a lot of things tonight. But listen, you won't tell Josh about this, will you? I mean, if I do decide to tell him, or if I don't... you won't say anything, right?"  
  
"Of course not," Joey says. "But you should."  
  
"You going to leave it alone now?" CJ asks, with a wry smile.  
  
"Probably not," Joey answers quickly, and honestly. "For now, okay, but tomorrow, probably not." She smiles as she says this, but CJ isn't nearly convinced that she's joking.  
  
"Okay, well..." CJ starts.  
  
"I'm going to go now. You should talk to Josh,"  
  
"Yeah," CJ says, agreeing at last. "Maybe I should."  
  
Joey smiles at her with an air of accomplishment and then turns away and disappears into the Communications Bullpen. 


	3. Epilogue

CJ is looking at the door long after Joey goes, and when she finally moves, it is to pick up the phone. When she presses a button the speed dial, it is with conviction. After a moment, she speaks into the phone.  
  
"Josh," she begins, the casual professionalism in her voice fading after she says his name. "When you've got a minute, can you come see me?" There is a pause, and then she says, "No it's not a work thing, it's just a ... It's another thing," she extemporizes, and then a wave of relief passes over her face. "Yeah," she says, and hangs up the phone. She leans back in her chair and swivels around to gaze out the window.  
  
  
  
A short distance from where she sits and waits, Josh has gathered together Joey and her group of polling experts.  
  
"Look, I have to go for a minute," he says apologetically to Joey and others in his office.  
  
"What's going on?" Joey asks him, her curiosity genuine.  
  
"It's nothing. I just have to see CJ for a minute," he explains as he heads out the door.  
  
Joey smiles at this briefly, and turns her attention to the staffers in the room. "Take the rest of the night, everyone. We'll start up again tomorrow," she tells them, and walks into the corridor. Across the bullpen, she can see Josh enter CJ's office and close the door behind him. 


End file.
